First-time cocaine offenders caught with five grams of the drug should go to drug treatment or get probation, not prison, three of four white Americans say.

The Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP) reported that the survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago also found that those who called for imprisoning cocaine users were more likely to make moral judgments about users, to blame users for their addictions, to deny that racism is a problem in the U.S., and to believe that blacks are more likely than whites to use cocaine.

The survey of 783 white Americans found that 51 percent favored treatment for cocaine offenders, while 26 percent favored probation. "Scholars have suggested that racism and moralism have influenced American attitudes on addressing drug problems, and we believe that this is the first study to empirically test whether these factors are related," said study co-author Kenneth Rasinski.

Added Rosalyn Lee, the other co-author of the study: "Our study shows that racial attitudes were related to the tendency to blame and make moral judgments about addicts for addiction; and those with a tendency to blame and moralize were more likely to support prison sentences."

The survey results were published in the June 2006 issue of the International Journal of Drug Policy. The study was funded by the SAPRP, a project of the http://www.rwjf.org Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.